The mutation was incredibly sudden.

Crimson blood, like pearls from a broken string, gushed from her mouth, nose, and all seven orifices. It pooled at her chin before dripping down.

The drops of blood first stained her white lab coat, then spattered on the floor with a DRIP, DRIP sound.

"Hm? What’s going on? My puppet in the Federation was actually killed?!"

A brief moment of confusion flickered in Thick Spider’s eyes before she came to her senses.

She circulated the True Essence in her body, forcing the blood that was steadily flowing from her seven orifices to stop.

Her face was slightly pale, her expression terrifyingly grim.

Inside, she was a whirlwind of shock and fury.

Once she processed what had happened, she immediately understood.

The puppet that had been acting as her stand-in within the Federation had been killed, causing a backlash that affected her to a certain degree.

That was the puppet she had spent the longest time refining. While its strength was only at the peak of the Qi Sect, a special refining method had allowed it to possess a portion of her power—the Power of the Heart. It could even wield a Pseudo Domain Power equivalent to her own.

In terms of overall combat strength, it was comparable to a Self-Phase Realm Refining God Venerable.

How could she not be shocked and enraged that it had now been destroyed?

Thus, she was desperate to know what had happened.

Thinking of this, she felt a tearing sensation in her Divine Soul. She sat cross-legged on the floor, closed her eyes, and began to heal while simultaneously absorbing the memories that had returned from the puppet’s body.

This was because that puppet possessed its own consciousness.

It could be considered one of her clones and a separate persona.

She could only access its memories if she actively chose to, or when the puppet died.

「A moment later.」

Some color returned to her deathly pale face. She opened her eyes, and a flash of disbelief and venomous hatred flickered within them.

’Damn it, how dare he covet our Inheritance Secret Martial Arts! How dare he!?’

As she thought of this, a trace of confusion appeared in her eyes, as if there was something she couldn’t figure out.

’And why is that guy so strong? I’ve never heard of him before. Could it be some old fossil who successfully possessed a body and is living a second life? But that’s impossible. Even the Divine Soul of a Refining God Venerable couldn’t possibly survive for ten thousand years.’

’But that’s not certain either. Perhaps someone perfected their Life Map, strengthening their Divine Soul in some way... ’

’Besides, based on my understanding of Xuanqing and his ties to the Human Race... as a top-tier combatant among them, a Refining God, it’s impossible for him to stand by and do nothing in this situation.’

’So what’s going on now? Not only did he not stop it, he actually helped the other party.’

’It’s just a pity that a puppet is ultimately just a puppet. Although it had some cognitive ability, it was too rigid. Without my control, it couldn’t exert much of its strength—it was only a little stronger than a Qi Dao Grandmaster.’

’If my main body had been there, even if I was unwilling, I wouldn’t have acted out on the spot! And I certainly wouldn’t have been killed so directly...’

These thoughts flickered through her mind one by one.

The sudden turn of events had put her in an absolutely foul mood.

The only silver lining was that her Food Master Puppet had been successfully refined.

"You dared to kill my puppet? Just you wait!"

A murderous glint flashed in Thick Spider’s eyes.

She now hated not only Hu Qi, but Xuanqing as well.

So what if he was at the Refining God Limit? She believed that with her Sea Demon-like Food Master Puppet, she would be no weaker than him.

One had to understand something about puppets.

The combat power they could unleash with someone controlling them versus without was as different as night and day.

However, she had no intention of taking revenge immediately.

To be on the safe side, it was better to recover from her injuries and increase her strength a bit more first.

Thinking of this, her gaze shifted to the side, where rows of identical nutrient pods were lined up. A quick count revealed six or seven of them.

Inside them lay figures, both male and female, human and monster alike.

These were the fruits of her labor over the past few decades: various Food Masters and Refining God Venerables who had died in the clashes of the previous civilization.

However, all of these bodies were missing parts. Missing limbs or even half a torso were common sights; there was hardly a complete one among them. Some of the more severe cases were nothing more than a head.

But the severed parts of their bodies were submerged in the liquid within the nutrient pods.

Upon closer inspection, one could see fleshy buds growing from some of the wounds.

They intertwined, beginning to recover at an extremely slow pace.

’The only regret is that I never found the body of that Saint Emperor. Rumor has it that he had already completed most of his Life Map. If I could get my hands on it, the puppet I could create would be even more powerful...’

As she thought this, a look of regret flashed in her eyes.

However, at that very moment.

Her expression suddenly changed.

’He found this place so quickly?’

She snapped her head up, her gaze seemingly able to pierce through the metal partitions of the ceiling to see a figure of a young man with a long saber on his back appear in the sky above.

The moment the young man appeared, his gaze instantly locked onto the island where Thick Spider was located.

Then.

Without a single word of nonsense, he abruptly raised his arm. In an instant, the Heaven and Earth Primordial Energy gathered frantically, as if it had been summoned.

Thousands of white Primordial Energy light orbs, each the size of a human head, rapidly formed around him.

As the orbs appeared, their initially spherical shape was instantly stretched and deformed by an unseen force, making them look like footballs as they began to spin continuously.

The young man suddenly clenched his fist!

Immediately after, these elongated orbs of Primordial Energy, spinning at a staggering speed, descended upon the entire island below like a torrential downpour.

They were so fast that the moment they shot out...

...Mach rings instantly bloomed behind them, tearing through the air and creating a terrifying, eardrum-piercing sonic boom.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!...

In an instant, violent explosions thundered ceaselessly.

The entire island was completely engulfed in a flash, as if it had been bombarded by a barrage of missiles.

Smoke and dust filled the air as rubble and wood splinters flew everywhere.

The entire island shook violently, and waves dozens or even hundreds of meters high spread out in all directions.

Fortunately, aside from a few uninhabited islets, there were no human settlements in the area.

Otherwise, the resulting waves alone would have caused an unimaginably terrible disaster.

A few seconds later, the sea breeze blew the smoke and dust away.

The island below was now riddled with craters. It looked as if more than half of the entire island had been shaved away.

Seawater rushed in, and the island’s volume had shrunk several times over, leaving less than a tenth of its original mass above the water’s surface.

Seeing this, the young man—Hu Qi—did not attack again.

His objective had been achieved.

He turned to the side and saw that three figures had appeared in the void a hundred meters away from him at some unknown point.

"You’re Thick Spider? Hand over the Inheritance Secret Martial Arts now, and I can spare your life!"

Hu Qi’s gaze was fixed on one of them.

Although his words were a question, he had already confirmed her identity. The familiar aura of the Power of the Heart was unmistakable.

Thick Spider stood at the very front.

Behind her stood two other figures, the Sea Demon-like Food Master among them.

The other was a burly man with a huge hole in his chest, as if something had pierced straight through him.

However, he was undoubtedly much weaker than the first, his aura at most equivalent to someone who had just entered the Refining God realm.

"You damned animal! How dare you destroy my life’s work?! Die!"

Looking at the island below, which had been nearly razed to the ground, Thick Spider’s once-beautiful face instantly became twisted with rage.

It had all happened too suddenly.

The expensive, precision instruments and all the recovering corpses had been obliterated in that one attack.

How could she not be furious?

The moment the words left her mouth, she attacked.

Without any warning, strands of thread began to appear silently in the void.

These threads were fine and transparent, almost impossible to perceive without close observation.

More and more threads appeared, weaving and intertwining to form a great net.

In the blink of an eye, every node in the net pulsed with a faint light, enveloping the area around Hu Qi.

The surrounding Heaven and Earth Primordial Energy froze at that moment, no longer easily manipulated.

As she made her move, the two puppets behind her acted in unison.

The human-headed, snake-bodied Sea Demon Food Master opened its mouth, and from its hideous maw, strange sonic waves spread out.

These sonic waves were invisible to the naked eye, but they carried a hair-raising power.

They vibrated through the void, and the air seemed to distort wherever they passed.

The fluctuations spread outward like ripples on water, moving with incredible speed.

The vibrations from the sonic waves made the entire space seem to tremble.

Faint, minute cracks appeared in the void, as if it couldn’t withstand such immense power.

The sound was sharp and piercing, like countless sharp blades slicing at one’s eardrums.

Immediately after, the burly man took a step forward.

The dormant Qi and Blood in his body roared to life, and faint flashes of blinding, scorching lightning sparked around him.

This burly man was a Refining God from the Celestial Thunder Sect during the era of the Miwu Civilization.

The Celestial Thunder Sect was the predecessor of the Thunder Gate.

Its practitioners of the Inheritance Secret Martial Arts also possessed Thunder Power.

Because of his Celestial Thunder Tempering Body, his physique was incomparably tough.

Now, he suddenly appeared before Hu Qi, clenched his fist, and brought it down with thunderous force.

Before the fist even arrived, a dazzling, destructive light of thunder spread forth.

The surrounding area seemed to transform into a surging, churning tide of interwoven lightning, annihilating all vitality in its path as it swept over Hu Qi.

The three of them attacked simultaneously with their full strength, holding nothing back.

Thick Spider’s threads sealed off the Heaven and Earth Primordial Energy in the area, the Sea Demon Food Master used its strange sonic waves to interfere, and the burly man launched a frontal assault.

With this three-pronged, sudden attack, she was confident she could take down her opponent even if he was at the limit of the Divine Image Realm.

To be even more certain, Thick Spider even used a Secret Technique that temporarily over-drafted her energy to burst forth with greater power, hoping to unleash an even more formidable attack.